Page:Modern Czech Poetry, 1920.djvu/15

Rh the leading figures and episodes of history are depicted in a poetical style whose energy and lack of obscurity harmonize with the directness of each recital. It is these qualities, together with the gift of commenting on topical events without lapsing into triviality, which have made Machar the most popular Czech writer of today. During the war Machar was imprisoned by the Austrian authorities, apparently on account of four poems which they considered dangerous to public order. In a prose-work entitled "The Jail" he has described the incidents leading up to his arrest, and his experiences in prison. This narrative, with its unflagging vividness and clarity forms a literary and historical document of quite unusual interest.

Sova was born in the same year as Machar, to whom, however, he presents a complete contrast. He expresses all the dreamy, the sensitive and the tragically melancholy features of the Czech character. His early work consists of poetry which admirably reproduces external impressions of town and country scenery. He then applied the same penetrative vision to the recording of emotional phenomena, and from this point onward, Sova's poetry becomes a chronicle of inner struggles, of bitterness, of despondency, till in the "Harvests" (1913) he arrives at a mood of reconciliation which clarifies the world with a mellow autumn radiance. The delicacy, richness and subtlety of his style ("impressionism", is here a vague and inadequate label) are peculiarly adapted to the allegory and symbolism which render his most typical poems so profoundly moving. Yet Sova can also reveal a racial ferocity as uncompromising and outspoken as that of Machar. Thus his poetical invective, entitled, "To Theodor Mommsen" is a masterpiece of passionate rhetoric.

In the poetry of Březina (b. 1868) — a remarkable and baffling figure, who has spent his life in the obscurer districts of Moravia — all contact with the world of reality has been eliminated. His native Czech pietism has been stimulated by literary influences, and much of his work bears a superficial sesemblanceresemblance [sic] to that of Whitman. His diction with its bewildering wealth of imagery combines the two extremes of primitive simplicity and intellectual refinement. And, while occult things are